The dancers move in a crooked circle, break briefly into partners, then back out to the line again, closing their eyes and mouthing the words: “Ain’t too proud to beg, sweet darlin’…” The night is so hot dancers and non-dancers sweat equally, even in this green basement banquet room where we have gathered to re-meet and celebrate what is and what was.
“It’s so nice, isn’t it?” my friend shouts to me across our table, ”not to have to wait for the boys to ask us to dance!” She nods at the men out on the floor who are obviously enjoying being vastly outnumbered and unencumbered.
Aha! I think to myself, that’s that’s the metaphor I’ve been searching for. At our 50th high school reunion, at the age of 68, we finally feel free to dance without waiting to be asked. Even here? No, I correct myself - especially here. We’re home.
Ours is a generation that has delighted in breaking all the rules, flaunting the social and political norms our entire lives. The cumulative results have been mixed, our children now complain. Yet in my memory of the adolescence I shared with these sweaty dancers, conformity was the goal. We knew it was time to grow up but what did “grown-up” look like? Certainly we did not intend to become our parents, so we had no models but the others in our restless, clueless clan, and we each feared that everyone but us shared some kind of secret code we’d never, ever learn.
“Let your friends laugh, even this I can stand…”
Maybe we still harbor that fear. Each of us, I think, walked into the room tonight unsure of how classmates we hadn’t seen in decades would take our wrinkles, our extra pounds, our stories, maladies and politics. How did our choices add up and compare?
But something’s changed. At past reunions, our life stories were on display and gamesmanship was palpable. Tonight, we’re deemed a success if we have the strength and courage to get here… and the will to dance. ‘You look just the same!’ we exclaim over and over, and it is true. We look right through the wrinkles and scars to pinpoint the adolescent we once knew, feared and loved both inside ourselves and in those around us.
As the song ends, the circle dissolves and immediately re-forms, even bigger now. Arms reach for the ceiling.
“All I really need, is good lovin’ baby!”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,” we all chime in, eyes closed.
John, my classmate, husband and fellow traveler, squeezes my knee under the table. He nods toward our friends in fractured motion. “You know what it is,” he says as if he’s read my mind. “None of us have anything left to prove.” He raises his eyebrows, and I agree – nothing left to prove, no need to ask permission. This is where we are and why it’s different: we can dance tonight until our legs and lungs give out; we can admit to old crushes and affairs, disappointments, jealousies and triumphs because it’s not a time for reckoning. The differences don’t matter anymore.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah! All I really need…”